


追伸

by mildlydiscouraging



Category: Pacific Rim (2013)
Genre: Anime References, Epistolary, Friends to Lovers, Gen, Letters, Long-Distance Friendship, M/M, Miscommunication, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-25
Updated: 2016-03-25
Packaged: 2018-05-29 02:56:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,623
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6356122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildlydiscouraging/pseuds/mildlydiscouraging
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"If I recall correctly, this is the man who confessed to wanting a pet Godzilla for his twentieth birthday, is it not? Glass houses, Dr. Geiszler."</p><p>It takes two months for Newton Geiszler to fall in love. It takes thirty months, around two hundred letters, several time zones, and two missed-ish connections for him to actually admit it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	追伸

**Author's Note:**

> a brief foreword: there are many, _many_ run-on sentences in this. it's a stylistic choice meant to mirror newt's thought process and not my disregard for grammar, i swear. i hope you can enjoy it regardless.
> 
> the title is postscript in japanese. hopefully. google translate says it is, and when i checked with my japanese knowing friend, they didn't know either, so we'll just assume it's correct. if not, please let me know, i don't wanna fuck that up. the section breaks are "and", specfically the form that (according to my friend) connects nouns in a list of unknown length. it’s a meta choice, i swear, not just aesthetic.

You write him a letter. A fucking _letter_. The end of the world is quickly approaching and you're resorting to snail mail. You're pretty sure the last time you wrote a letter was to your quasi-mother when you were seven and she was off in Europe singing _Carmen Buren_ or something like that. It's antiquated and slow, but (as you soon find out) that's Hermann Gottlieb for you.

Hermann Gottlieb, who publishes an article on the possible characteristics of the Breach so brilliantly _stupid_ (has he even _seen_ a Kaiju lung, there's no way they could survive those depths) that you stamp down your impatience long enough to wade through all the universities, institutions, postal boxes, and _return to senders_ it takes to find a real address for the guy. Usually you're all about that instant gratification, but something makes you feel like this time the end will justify the excruciatingly slow means.

**や**

The letter you get in return is sent to your mailbox on campus, which is weird since you remember carefully writing out the address of the apartment you and your dad and uncle share in that tiny corner of the envelope, which means this Hermann guy _does_  have the internet to look you up, and is also a bit of a prick.

You get emails about how full your little postal box is almost every day, but most of the time you ignore them because it's all invitations to interdepartmental schmoozefests and that kind of crap. After a week of waiting for Hermann's letter, though, it occurs to you to check, and, sure enough, once you've convinced the grouch behind the counter to hand over the stack, there's a letter postmarked Berlin with a date of five days ago.

Right away you notice the handwriting. Cramped, tall, and very, very even, it's almost a carbon copy of the penmanship books they gave you as a kid, albeit veering slightly towards a doctoral scrawl. As you stare at the slanted address, it occurs to you that you've never liked your full name that much, and yet here you are, captivated reading nothing but.

Anyway, the letter comes to your fancy mailbox and you decide to read it in your fancy office, cuz you haven't really been in it since you were a spry nineteen year old with only _three_ doctorates under his belt, and you oughta use it eventually. You forgot you had a swivel chair, _awesome_. Kicking your feet up on the dusty student assistant applications, you settle back to open your letter from the one and only Hermann Gottlieb.

And _wow_ , he's an asshole. He's kind of pretentious (which you had expected) and a bit of a nerd (which you had hoped for), which is all fine and dandy. Where he gets you is when he insists on using your title every time he addresses or attacks you in equal measure. You very consciously made a point of omitting it in your letter, and for what you think is good reason. So what if you've got almost as many degrees as there've been missions to the moon? You've run into your fair share of people who make a big snobby deal out of every ribbon and paper, it's exhausting. Hopefully that's not the case with Hermann, though. God, you really hope it's not.

All in all, he seems like he's got a bit of a stick up his ass, which is understandable as you're, y'know, at war with aliens, and a little over the top, but in the end the entire five page letter ( _five_ ) makes you wish there were five more. Every sentence is grammatically perfect, as opposed to your run-on messes that mirror your thoughts, and he's inordinately polite even as he attempts to rip you to shreds. On your way home, you stop at the nearest drugstore and buy almost an entire ream of stamps. Never let it be said you didn't dive straight into everything.

**や**

Your dad starts bringing in the mail with a bemused look on his face. If you didn't love him so much, you'd be annoyed. You can never stay mad for long, though, because there's always at least one letter for you (more when Hermann's in Seoul and the mail gets backed up) but they're worth the wait for two reasons.

One, they decide to start building giant robots to fight the alien monsters coming from the ocean. It's the coolest thing you've ever said, and you won't stop saying it, much to the chagrin of your students, but come on, _giant robots_.

Two, he finally deigns to call you Newton. All it took was you badgering him about it for seventeen letters and signing off every time with "NEWT" in dark graphite before you supposedly earn even one "Newton." You can practically hear the eye roll. Still stuffy, still nerdy, still Hermann.

All in all, well worth the teasing glances from your dad and uncle.

Plus, you know, whatever. You're allowed to have friends, okay? Even if their dads are douchebags and they live in a different country and it takes a month to get them to call you by your first name and they annoy the hell out of you sometimes and you're a little enamored of them.

**や**

It doesn't explain the feeling of moths in your stomach when you lick the flap of the next envelope or run out of ink in your designated letter writing pen, but that's okay.

**や**

One day (because it's become more than once a week, thank you, airmail) he says something about how all PPDC funding was being poured into the Jaeger Program and you reply with, "God help us, we're in the hands of engineers."

It goes completely over his head.

Immediately it's a game for you, how many movie references you can slip into each letter. Once you manage to copy and paste an entire Mulder monologue without him noticing. You're a little proud of yourself for apparently being so much like your idol that your rants are interchangeable, but at the same time you know it's likely that he actually did get it and is just ignoring it because, well, Hermann.

He eventually gives in, though, retaliating with films he _knows_  you would never see and citing their titles in the footnotes.

It's so infuriating you want to scream. Or laugh. You lean more towards the latter, like you always do.

**や**

The next letter, he makes a reference to Evangelion, and you laugh so hard you leave tear stains on the paper. _I should've known you were a total weeb_ , you write back, _who else is gonna think building giant robots is the best way to fight sea monsters?_

You can already imagine his response: "If I recall correctly, this is the man who confessed to wanting a pet Godzilla for his twentieth birthday, is it not? Glass houses, Dr. Geiszler."

It makes you laugh already, which you would find worrisome if you weren't so busy looking for an envelope. You run out of the damn things pretty quick nowadays, so you've started just taking stacks of them from neighboring offices. Hermann has already told you off for it, but if you can't abuse office supplies at the end of the world, when can you?

You address the letter to Shinji, just to piss him off. You're finding it's your new favorite hobby.

**や**

It takes you two weeks worth of letters with your Skype name written at the bottom, eventually resorting to highlighting it and writing "dammit, Hermann, Skype me already, you nerd", but finally, _finally_ you get a contact request from one _hrmnngttlb_. Ready to berate him both for taking his sweet time and having an awful screen name, you quickly make sure you've changed your name from "I'm the fucking lizard king" or whatever it was last.

Thankfully, it wasn't, and only a minute of messaging (for the first time in real time) back and forth passes before you're face to face with him. As soon as you see that froggy face you can't help it, you laugh. He doesn't seem to take offense, though, just rolls his eyes and smiles a little back. Newt three, universe none.

When you hang up an hour later, you notice the taste of blood in your mouth from where your lip has split from smiling too much. You've never been so happy to bleed in your entire life. Bounding down the stairs in search of some chapstick, you run into Illia in the kitchen.

"The letter was good then?" He asks.

You take a three second break from your drawer rummaging to explain that yes, the letter was good, Hermann is even more lame in three dimensions (via two dimensions, yes, but progress nonetheless) and he totally has a cowlick on the back of his head and he has no idea who Mulder and Scully are but don't worry, you're fixing that, and also has Illia seen any chapstick and is your lip still bleeding because it was bleeding earlier, but maybe it's stopped, you don't know, has it?

He nods and points you to the dish of keys and picks by the phone and you grab the last thing of chapstick before heading back upstairs. You still have a letter to respond to, after all.

**や**

They just send your doctorates via courier now, as the pomp and circumstance started to wear thin around the third time, so number six is delivered to your door by a guy with bike shorts way too thin for December weather and the whole family gets Chinese food in celebration.

The next time you two get to talk (which is a little while as he's at some big fancy math meeting in Alaska) you casually wave it at the camera with an offhand, "This is probably the last one for a while, what with the whole alien war thing, but now I'm _six_ times as much of a doctor as you are."

He rolls his eyes briefly before what you said seems to sink in and he asks, "Another degree?"

You nod, explaining that that's why you haven't stopped talking about the artificial tissue replication stuff every two seconds. It ends with you teasing him about not being able to "keep up, old man," but his face is uncharacteristically soft when he tells you, "Well done, Newton."

And then he immediately qualifies it with something about how you "collect doctorates like children do shiny rocks" and "dilute the significance of such impressive achievements with the sheer amount you have" but you can still hear the gentle pride under his griping and it feels like more of an achievement than a piece of paper ever has.

**や**

Then he's in Alaska to help found the Jaeger Academy, which is exciting until you realize that it's a school for people and not the Jaegers themselves. Still pretty cool, you guess, but slightly less so. The thought of giant robots sitting in little school desks still has you in stitches, though.

The first thing he does when you call him is complain about how cold it is, but you can't bring yourself to feel sympathetic when it means he's wearing an absolutely ridiculous parka. He looks like a grumpy Arctic explorer, and you tell him so, but he retaliates with average temperatures and hours of sunlight and whatever statistics for Kodiak Island, so you let the tinge of pink in his cheeks slide. He doesn't appreciate your insinuations of warming him up either, so you let him act like he thinks they're a joke.

He befriends this Russian couple (the ones who gave him the coat) who are both so individually massive that they can't both fit on the screen at the same time. They tell you stories of when Hermann isn't completely miserable, because even from thousands of miles and four hours behind they can tell you worry. Hermann can't though, apparently, and grumbles his way through the whole thing, insisting that he's fine while simultaneously complaining about the lack of heating in the mess hall.

You don't know any Russian outside of what you can barely remember up from some old submarine movies, and judging by the look on Hermann's face when they start going rapid fire back and forth over his head, neither does he, but you manage to catch a few words here and there. At one point, the woman ruffles his hair and calls him "ptichka", and you open a translator in another window and find, after some trial and error spelling, that it means "birdy". You mentally file that in the folder of things to tease him about, but also silently agree. He's bony and thin like a twig and his words are sharp like a beak and you just want to make sure his nest has enough feathers or whatever the hell birds sleep in.

"Even on the other side of the globe, you're still obnoxious," he says.

"Just wait til you see me in person," you reply, and the Russians glance at each other, eyebrows raised, before backing out and leaving you to your bickering.

**や**

Your Christmas playlist goes into effect December 1st, but it isn't until the train home that Mariah Carey makes you shed a tear or two or five. You've made a list every year since you were four, and an extra one for Hanukkah, but this year it's only a bullet point: a plane ticket.

You get a fifty count box of envelopes instead, which is just as good, you convince yourself. Jacob gives you a sympathetic smile and you squash the thought of why you need that.

(Hermann sends you a leather bracelet that's made of Kaiju skin and you promise to never take it off, even as he rolls his eyes at you and says, "Don't be stupid, Newton, you'll ruin it." He gets the giant Kaiju plushie you sent him three days later, and when he opens it on Skype he frowns disdainfully, something about "childish" and "trivializing serious events", but every day after its there sitting on the bed behind him. It makes your chest feel warm, like you swallowed a string of Christmas lights.)

(He sends you a letter too. Of course he does, you can't blame him, you did too, but it's much less caustic than you've come to know him, and some might even call it sentimental if they didn't really know him. You don't talk about it apart from when you mentioned offhand that you got it. He says he got yours as well and you smile at each other until it stops feeling like four hours.)

**や**

You never quite got why Britain was so involved in the PPDC since they weren't actually on the Pacific at all, but then they build a research center on a British hyphen something island and you get invited to the opening party thing, so you aren't really complaining.

Hermann's the one who invited you. Not directly, of course, he's too punctilious for that, too dedicated to "the right channels" and "protocol" and "procedure", but you get a fancy letter on the Marshal of the Lima Shatterdome's letterhead asking you to come that at the end says, "Your research is well respected in the community here and even Dr. Gottlieb speaks highly of you, in his own way," which is to say, begrudgingly.

But you take it as a sign of good faith, that he actually wants you there, especially when you bring it up one night and he defends himself by saying that it would be a good chance for you to network with fellow xenobiologists ("Kaijuologist, come on Herms, just say it." "That's not even a word.") before mentioning not-at-all-offhand that he'll be there too. If you weren't already so dead set on going, that would've sealed the deal for you.

**や**

You're used to staying up late, hardly even noticing when the clock says it's five in the morning, but apparently Hermann isn't quite attuned to the same level of insomnia as you, as he starts yawning around midnight his time and is asleep on his laptop not even an hour later.

After taking the appropriate amount of screenshots for future blackmail and/or fawning over, you flash the light on your phone in front of the camera a couple times to wake him up. He mumbles something at you, scowling even in sleep. He looks absolutely precious, so you tell him so. Some more scowling, more mumbling. It's abrasive in a way that's meant to convince you he doesn't care. You keep smiling at him until he smiles back, and then you take a discrete screenshot of that too, and he says he's really looking forward to seeing you, and you melt again.

**や**

The PPDC even goes so far to buy you a plane ticket (you definitely _don't_ think about how the email comes right after you mention to Hermann the stupid high prices of transcontinental airfare) and you're actually packed early for once, by a whole week.

And then Illia has a relapse.

And suddenly you're landlocked in the worst way, because you don't want to leave, but the thought of missing this is worse than... almost anything, really. It's worse than everything _but_ not being where you are right now, because this has happened before but never in a time where alien monsters were eating ships and everyone was too scared to do trade across the Pacific so the things you need, that you can barely afford to  allow yourselves to need, are even harder to get than they used to be, and _man_ those Kaiju just keep messing everything up for you, don't they?

(They also brought you together, and they're awfully awe-inspiring, and they give you _purpose_  and  _drive_ , so you can't hate them entirely, love them in a little way, but that's not relevant.)

(You apologize, of course, because you're not a jerk and you are genuinely sorry, and he looks sad in his own reserved way, and it breaks your heart even further.)

**や**

When you finally have enough time and focus to apply, it's just a little too late to qualify for the winter semester, so you have to wait all the way to July until you can fly north for the summer. Even knowing abstractly that it was going to be cold, you're not prepared for the way you wake up in the middle of the night to find your feet frozen to the foot of your metal bed frame.

And, to make matters worse, Hermann graduated in January and is now well into work on the next generation of Jaegers in Vladivostok. The Russians pop up again, who you learn are the Kaidonovskys that your roommates won't shut up about.

(Sharing a room is one of the main problems, you find, right up there with the cold. There's no such thing as privacy in the entire state of Alaska, which you really start to miss when your hands shake with something other than cold.)

Christmas in July feels like Christmas for once. And then August feels like Christmas, and September feels like Christmas, and October, and November, and actual Christmas, until you're packing home to get the rest of your things to head to Tokyo. It's the closest you two will have been in the whole time you've known each other, only an hour and a couple hundred miles away. You're stupid, punch drunk, giddy-in-your-sleep excited.

It takes a week to get all your shit in order, though, and for the time being the soon-to-be one hour is miles and thousands of miles away from the current nine. And while you're basically on opposite sides of the planet, you can manage to spin into alignment once, on New Year's Eve of all fucking days.

Or at least, New Year's Eve for you, which you've spent so far getting absolutely plastered with the last few colleagues who can still stand you. The clock's barely grazed eleven before you can feel the company stumbling down into _who the fuck does this guy think he is anyway_ territory, so you take the T home, the first mostly empty car to show up. Empty trains make you feel alone in a way you can deal with. There's space in the loneliness, but when there's clackety clacking in the background it isn't the echoing kind of space where every little thought you have turns on you and pounds you back into the ground.

It's quiet when you get to the apartment. Dad and Illia are most likely already asleep, which is great because it leaves you to stumble up the stairs in peace. The shaking stops.

After you lay facedown on your unmade bed for either five minutes or half an hour, you decide calling Hermann is a great idea, the best really. You type in your password wrong twice (stupid uncooperative fingers, but it's not the wrong kind, so it's okay), but when you finally get in there's that green dot by Hermann's name. Some combination of divine intervention and drunk dumb luck is totally in your favor.

The first thing he does is comment on how flushed your face is, to which you respond that, in case he had already forgotten, winter is fucking cold. He glares at you until you remember that right, he's in Russia, but that's besides the point. Or it _is_ the point, you forget. You're drunk and the car was below freezing, which did nothing to sober you up, although the warmth in the pit of your stomach is quickly changing tracks, switching roots. It's different. You've always liked different.

"You're different," is what comes out. Hermann raises an eyebrow.

"No, don't—" You stumble in a more metaphorical way now. "You're different, yeah, you've got your lame vests and your crazy smart brain and your weird thing for chalk, but you're different to _me_ , you know?"

He tries to interrupt you. He's always trying to do that. He should listen more often. Really you both should.

"You're different cuz you make me feel different, you make me feel shaky in a good way, like I'm gonna vibrate out of my skin whenever I talk to you but you're gonna be there to put me back inside after and it could be okay, it would be okay, you're there and you're different cuz you're you and it's not weird at all. You're not weird, you're different, it's good, it's— it's always good, promise. Forever."

When you finish on an inhale he looks dazed. You're used to seeing that look on people when you stop talking, but never on him before. It's both awesome and terrifying, like you're finding a lot of things nowadays.

"You're different because you make sense already, without all the detail, you already made sense." It's sort of an explanation? It's the best you've got right now.

It seems to work, too. Hermann still looks dazed, but like he gets it at the same time, like it makes sense the way you know he does. You get into a staring contest without the contest part (See? You can totally do things without making it a competition) and it's a good long while before the soft silence is broken by your vibrating phone. You forgot you set an alarm for midnight back on the train. It feels like a million miles away, like the distance is between you and the past and not the future.

Hermann seems to understand what's going on before you do, because Hermann, and wishes you a happy new year with a wistful smile, softer than you could've ever imagined or hoped he could be. You get why they call it wishing now. Wishing and wistful. They're both kind of magic.

You press two fingers to his image on the screen and he doesn't even tell you off for smudgy fingers and sentimental feelings, just does the same. Nine hours. You can do this.

**や**

The next day he contradicts himself on something inconsequential and you send him a screenshot of the text he sent the first time around. He doesn't say anything about the heart emojis in his name at the top of the screen. You're too busy gloating to be concerned.

**や**

Every day crossed out on your calendar makes you even more nervous. It started out as a countdown to the day you're supposed to move into the Tokyo Shatterdome, then it was a little bit later to the K-Sci conference in Seoul, and now it's days til you finally meet Hermann Gottlieb.

Your boxes are already in Japan, waiting for you to unpack in the skeleton 'Dome after the conference, so you only have the straps of your beat up backpack to fiddle with while waiting in the airport.

Hermann meets you at the baggage claim and you're this close to slo-mo rom-com running into his arms. He would hate it, and you almost do it.

He concedes to hug you, though, and for all that he can be a cold, heartless bitch at times, he's the warmest, best, most scratchy-wooly-est hugger you've ever known, and if you weren't already sure you were in love with him, you would be by now. He doesn't let go any sooner than you. Total win, until he gives you a weird look, an expectant one, but you can't answer because you don't know the question. Sometimes Hermann is like this, you've learned, and you thought you were good at reading him by now, but with his face right in front of yours, it's a lot harder than the lines of a letter. When you smile and raise an eyebrow, he deflates a little, goes quiet, hails a cab out in the drizzle in silence. You feel a little colder. Stupid Korean weather.

On the way to the convention center he keeps giving you sidelong looks and you wanna talk about it right there right then, but you actually made a plan this time and you're not gonna ruin it just because you're bored in traffic and can't keep your mouth shut. Yet, despite your best efforts, you end up blurting out something about the weather ( _really, Newt, the weather?_ ), which leads to more semi-idle chitchat about the conference, which leads to some new approach Hermann's thought of recently to find the Breach, which leads to you almost getting into a shouting match over stuff you've tried explaining to him a dozen times. The kind of pressure you would encounter at the ocean floor that far out would immediately burst any and all internal organs, you've said it over and over—

It doesn't matter. What _does_ matter is that you've learned in only twenty minutes that your normally volatile discussions are even more so in person, and the cabbie is now looking at you weird, and Hermann looks even more red-faced up close, and you can't help but laugh at that and he gets mad again and then there's some more yelling walking into the hall.

So that's something to keep in check. You can totally do this.

**や**

You totally can't do this.

You had hoped it would be easier inside, where you're surrounded by people, and maybe the peer pressure for you and propriety for Hermann would keep the arguing in check, but no such luck.

There's a lot of yelling. At the receptionist desk: yelling. In line for crappy complimentary coffee: yelling. On the escalator: yelling. In the lecture hall: well, okay, heated whispering, but the point still stands. Yelling.

His room is right down the hall from yours and the parting ways is awkward enough after getting shushed at by everyone in the five foot radius of where you were sitting, not to mention how the backpack on your back feels heavier with all the things you had been planning on telling him. "Your hair is stupid" and "some days I only get out of bed to talk to you" and "remember when you called me in the rain" and "you're a really good hugger" and "I love—" stacking one on top of the other on top of the other until there's a teetering stack of _something_ s wobbling, knocking against the walls of your brain, the beginning of such a headache you accidentally slam your door behind you and can't bring yourself to go back and try again.

Nothing is ever how you thought it would be. Nothing ever goes exactly to plan, or sometimes even ever close. You thought you would've learned by now, but you guess not.

**や**

He doesn't talk to you, doesn't call, doesn't text, just disappears. Even though you're in the same building all day every day for half a week, it's like he's a stealthy ghost in the corners of every room. And yeah, you're pretty much the king of miscommunication, but when you fuck up it's always from saying too much or the wrong thing at the wrong time or talking over people when you really should be listening because _hello_ , their grandmother just _died_. When you have issues communicating it's because you're too much, not that you're not enough.

You don't know how to deal with it, so you just don't. You let Hermann do whatever sulking bullshit he's trying to pull and you're mad now, of course you are, because hope beyond hope you had kinda thought this was it, this was the moment, this was the one. You're so upset you skip complimentary waffles and get to the airport five hours early, close to praying the gates aren't alphabetical and Tokyo's as far from Vladivostok as you can get right now. You miss nine hours just a little bit.

**や**

The last thing you expected to find waiting for you in the unheated, mostly empty shell of the Shatterdome was mail. Well, probably the actual last was Hermann, and it still stings like accidentally cutting yourself shaving and forgetting about it because you're already late for class, shit, but everything's going just great, you're on time, the future's still waiting for you. You let yourself hope for two seconds this means you're talking again. It's probably just Illia testing out the address.

Oh, but it's not. It's so very not, it's Hermann, and even better it's January 1st Hermann, it's the Hermann who didn't hate you yet, it's last-hurrah-maybe-even-one-more-try Hermann.

According to the layers of redirecting stickers, it had gotten to Boston _after_ you had set up your forwarding address to Tokyo, which meant you should've gotten it before the conference, if only you hadn't done something early for once, which means that...

You open the letter and you understand why he won't talk to you. You wouldn't either, because the guy basically _professed his love for you_ and you said _nothing_.

If it wasn't Hermann's handwriting, the spiky vowels and the e's that look like c's, the writing you memorized every day between letters, you would never have believed it was his words. It's too... poetic. You can't count how many times you've heard him criticize some coworker for bringing prose where it has no right to be ("It's a hard science thing, Newton, you wouldn't understand." "Hang on—") or rolled his eyes when you've said so much as a simile. Actually, you can count, and you have, because eighty percent of the time it happens he laughs at you when you groan in response and you can't forget it, his laughs are precious. It's seventy-six.

You've seen Hermann enthusiastic before, like when they showed _Contact _ in the rec room in Vladivostok and he couldn't stop talking about it for a good hour and a half after, but never so ardent. And, much like Hermann when describing the look on Ellie Arroway's face in front of the quadruple star system, it brings you to tears. You can't even bring yourself to want to be embarrassed, you're just so...

Happy.

Fuck, you gotta call him back.

**や**

It's become habit to sit with your phone on your desk and press the call button every time you get his voicemail. You take a break every few minutes of course, because if you left him with seventy missed calls you're pretty sure you'd ruin what scrap of a chance you might still have. As is, you're glad you sprung for that unlimited international calls shit (although when you got it, you had been operating under the assumption you would actually get to _talk_ to Hermann, but baby steps).

You slowly become comfortable in your corner of the lab, still feeling a little cramped because they're trying to fit eight biologists with their own workstations and operating tables and specimens and related junk into one lab, which sounds like the opening of a really shitty joke, something Hermann would pretend to not laugh at, if Hermann was _returning any of your calls_.

At least you don't have a roommate. The worst part of the Academy, the hardest thing to adjust to, was having someone else constantly in your space. It's not that you didn't like the guys, you even still talk to some of them, like Tendo, he was really cool, and you're happy to hear that he's just over in Hong Kong. You're good at casual friends, at not caring too much and only letting people in just enough to keep yourself safe, which is as sad as it is down-to-the-bone true. He texts you every once in awhile, asking how it's going across the couple of seas and Koreas between you two, that kind of casual day-to-day stuff, never mentioning Hermann after you sorta freaked out at him a couple days ago. It's nice to have someone to talk to who understands what it's like, which as much as your dad and uncle try they fail at, and it's okay, but being alone is better. There's no one to tell you not to stay up the entire night, and there's no one to see when you— Well, there's no one to see. Every single person there is under more stress than is fit for even ten people to share, and as much as pressure has always helped you work better, helped you focus, when everything's unbalanced it all goes to shit. Nothing quite like moving to the other side of the globe to do that to you.

But you tell your dad that it's fine, you're still adjusting, so it's okay if you're not at a hundred percent right away (even though you've been there almost a week and you've felt worse and worse with every passing minute) because it's a new place and all that shit. Illia is scoffing in the background and your dad narrows his eyes as he not-so-smoothly changes the subject to something he saw in the grocery store last week. He still reminds you to stay hydrated and get enough sleep if you can pull yourself away from your "world saving" before he says goodbye, just like he always does. Your insomnia has never been more useful, though, even when it has you more often than not waking up slumped over your desk.

You're in a similar position when the Marshal's aides come in to check if everyone's ready for the open house tomorrow, which is news to you. Kelly, the nineteen year old intern who sits at the smaller desk next to yours, leans over at your confusion and explains that they're inviting over a bunch of big donors to show them around the finished 'Dome, try and scrounge up some more money after what happened with the Beckets and everyone suddenly abandoning ship. There'll also be some less boring people, she assures you, not just suits and ties. She heard there's a few people coming down from Russia, the Kaidonovskys and she thinks even a scientist or two.

If this was a movie, there would be some ticking instrumental playing right about now, to symbolize the gears turning in your head. You can practically hear it.

**や**

The amount of self control it takes to keep yourself from waiting at the helipad is astounding, especially coming from you. You're this close from throwing your room key at Tendo and ordering him to lock you in at least until the Russians arrive, but he's busy making eyes at some munitions tech from Alaska, so you go to find somewhere to hide. You end up behind the filing cabinets in the math department when you get lost in the winding hallways. You've never been up there before but it's less drafty than the stairwells were and you doodle on your arms with the permanent marker wedged in your back pocket, filling in the blank spaces with impressions and drafts of future monsters.

You remember when you got your third tattoo, Kaiceph, your first after "meeting" Hermann, and how you left a postscript once telling him to ignore your handwriting because you still had the bandages on and it stung, and Hermann didn't talk to you for a month because he said it was "completely inappropriate" and "bordering on sacrilege" and was generally pissed off. When you first Skyped, you had forgotten your sleeves were still rolled up and as soon as you can tear your eyes away from him, you see yourself in the tiny box and his expression all encompassed in the same glance. Luckily he'd seemed to have warmed up to them, or you, at the very least, waving you off when you frantically try to cover them up (sure, you're never one to back down from so much as someone looking at you funny, but you really, _really_ like Hermann and the last thing you wanna do is screw this up in any way).

Before he can move on, you offered to go with him if he ever wanted one. You didn't know why you said it at the time, he looked interested for some reason. You know now why, but when you'd asked at the time he'd dismissed it immediately, saying he still found it tacky, but this time around he seemed less upset than flattered so you ticked it in the win column.

The marker is your hand clatters to the floor and rolls under the bookshelf behind you. It clinks against the metal wall at the back of the room. Suddenly even the massively empty lab seems claustrophobic, the rows and rows of shelves and cabinets a maze you can't see the ends of, cut off, like a rat with no exit in someone's extensive experiment.

You don't mean to throw open the door as hard as you did but even then the banging of metal on metal is muffled and far away in your ringing ears. Maybe you aren't coping as well as you thought (although, who are you kidding, you never thought you were coping well at all, so that's no surprise) and you lean against the vibrating wall and slide down onto the floor. Things are so much easier with other people around. You know that now.

The hallways down here are a straightforward grid and focusing on the wall way away on your right. The staccato of your heart is calming rather than worrying, but even then it doesn't do much to distract you from all the plans you started making two nights ago. Pacing always helps. It only takes you four trips down the thirty yards to get it all in order again, your heart not slowing down per say, just less frantic in its beating, and your boots echoing and echoing like a steady thudding metronome. With every step things fall a little more in the place you've temporarily given them. It's not so much planning, really, as it is outlining, because you're well aware of the crushing disappointment that comes with almost achieved plans, but recently flying blind hasn't done you any favors, only almost gotten you into fistfights with techs in the hallways talking shit about how they don't need to know anything about the monsters but where to punch.

The good news is that there's no one to get your ass kicked by down here right now, until you realize that your evenly spaced paces don't match up with the sounds you're hearing now, that there's another set of footsteps coming down the other end of the hall, and you almost pull your frayed shoelaces out as you spin around, expecting to face a tour guide and some corporate flunkies to borderline scare off.

You _definitely_ weren't expecting to see Hermann, hair in slight disarray, jacket a little wet, and oh, now you notice the plunking of rain being thrown into the side of the building. All the loosely drawn together outlines you had melt in that rain, all the tension and worry you've been carrying around for days, weeks, maybe even months, not necessarily leaving you completely but going from solid weight to liquid, dripping down your spine until it's puddled in your feet, sloshing when you take a halting step forward. But when you do, Hermann takes a step back, like you're the same kind of magnet and he can't be all too close to you.

There's a moment of awkward shuffling where he looks at the ground and you can't look away. Eventually you get a few steps forward and he glances up at you, because even though he's taller than you he seems too far away to be anything but small. He _looks_ small, like he's wilted, or curled in on himself, or has a heavy burden to carry, or any other shitty metaphor he'd punch you in the shoulder for saying, despite the fact that it honestly describes how he looks.

"I was only—"

"Do you wanna see the watchtower?"

**や**

Hermann goes along willingly enough, and as you wind through the never ending halls you see him straightening up out of the corner of your eye, putting on the bravado like you've seen before, the face that says he's better than you and won't so much as listen to you try to stutter otherwise. You fought hard to chip away at the front enough to get inside, and it hurts a little to be back on the other side. You shrug it off, though, and quickly think through all the paths for the shortest one before ducking back into the lab for your jacket.

Over the sound of shoes and stairs, your thoughts are notching their ways up to racing. In all reality, you know that you hold all the cards, you just have to put them on the table. The only problem is that, when it comes to you two, you have a habit of flipping tables like that. So, there's that to worry about.

But Hermann's shield only works when you're looking straight at him, apparently, and if you stare at him long enough out of the corner of your eye it disappears completely, like one of those Magic Eye things. Your father used to say your eyes would stay stuck like that every time you sat at the kitchen table with one cross-eyed for hours and you believe him as soon as you hit the last stair.

The Tokyo Shatterdome had started off as a half-finished military base before K-Day, well, happened, at which point the half-assembled concrete and sheet metal was appropriated by the budding PPDC and eventually finished to the point where you were standing on it. The watchtowers were the first finished, meant to watch over the choppy Pacific as a small testament to the paranoia and xenophobia ingrained in the Japanese since America screwed everything up for them. In the few days you'd been there already, you've found yourself coming up here more and more often to watch the waves hurl themselves into the walls below. You guess you find some comforting in watching something else destroy itself instead.

It hadn't originally been on your radar what with the rain and all, but it's probably good to have backup for any lapses in conversation, or have enough white noise to cover up any sniffling you might unconsciously do. Whatever the situation calls for.

Leaning against the railing, you don't know what the situation even _is_. Hermann has his hood drawn up over his ears, his shoulders slightly hunched, one hand tight on his cane and the other on the slippery bar separating you from the depths. You can't read his face and it's killing you. You feed off the energy of the people around you, you gauge reactions like breathing and you work off that until you either get what you want or make sure someone else doesn't. Hermann always gave you as good as you got and it was the best part of every moment with him, but all you're getting now is radio silence. He's the one who breaks it.

"Why are we out here?"

"I'm in love with you."

It's not what you meant to say, but it's nothing less than the truth and you can't take it back. You can see his face now, too, shocked and wide eyed and a little wet from both the ocean spray and the drizzle. He's always been a little bit beautiful to you, even when he's eight seconds from verbally eviscerating you, but now...

You understand now why painters paint. You could talk for a million hours, compose a hundred shitty songs on the guitar you got for Christmas in third grade, write a thousand five page letters, and it would never be enough. There just aren't the words. There's no way to describe the shift in his eyes the gradient of shocked to wary to finally that tiny bit of hope that lights you up inside. If it was anyone but Hermann— but then again, it doesn't matter, because it _is_ Hermann and will probably never be anyone else. Doesn't stop you from wanting to kiss him senseless. In fact, it probably makes you want to more.

"I just thought I'd put that out there before I accidentally fuck everything up again, although at least now I know _how_ I'm fucking up, so there's that." You keep talking, but honestly you don't remember half of it. Most of the time you just talk long enough until it starts to make sense and hope people focus on that more than the nonsense at the start.

"Newton."

Can you paint sounds? As soon as the aliens are gone, you're on it.

"Hermann."

When he says your name, it's a full stop, a firm reminder of whatever he was trying to tell you just before, a reminder of a lot of things. When you say his, it's too close to a plea for your liking, asking for him to keep listening just this once and then maybe a few times more. What neither of you ever realized is you never needed to be reminded and he never needed to be asked.

He stares at you for a very long time, long enough that you accidentally started counting how many waves land right below your feet. At twelve, he purses his lips. At forty-eight, he sighs a little. At seventy, he lets go of the railing, hand balled up when he presses it to his eye and sighs again. You can't tell if he's frustrated or tearing up, not without seeing his eyes. Knowing Hermann, it's probably the former, so you prepare yourself for the worst. You thought you had seen the worst already, but apparently you're incredibly blind now.

"You can't _say_ that," is what he eventually comes out with, which is the stupidest thing you've ever heard him say, so you tell him so. He laughs, and he's definitely frustrated now, but it's something. If you can keep this up, you might get to kiss him after all.

He turns back to stare at the dark grey horizon and shakes his head. You find yourself with patience you didn't know you had. When you list the tiniest bit towards him and your shoulders brush, he says nothing to discourage you (although that could be more because his coat is so fluffy he had no idea) and you stay. He leans in too, which is nice, to say the least.

Before the anticipation kills you where you stand, you have to. "I can say that," you say as casually as you can. It doesn't sound very casual, but there's only so much informality you can force on a declaration of love. "I can say that, because I have to, because it's the truth and I really owe you that after I unwittingly fucked both of us over."

Hermann sighs again as his hands clench and unclench against the railing. You're really grateful for it with the whole keeping-you-from-not-drowning-in-the-churning-Pacific-ocean thing, especially since you never really learned how to swim, but you would give anything for those hands to be on yours instead of some salt water steel. Please please please just _say_ something.

"Could you say it again?" You almost miss it but _God_ , you wouldn't miss it for the world.

You turn to him mid-"Hermann." It's suddenly very important to you that you see his face. It's a familiar urgency in an unfamiliar context that drives you to scramble at his wet coat sleeve.

This time when you say it, with every iota of sincerity you've ever had in your body, his face finally seems to get the memo.

This time when you say it he smiles, an honest to God certified Gottlieb Smile, and you think about paint strokes and palettes, and then he ducks his head to direct that smile at the ground and you're floored by the sweep of his eyelashes against his inhumanly sharp cheekbones and how even the incoming thunder and waves can't drown out your heartbeat.

So it's a no-brainer when your hand lands on that cheekbone and he looks up again (but not _that_ far up, you can already hear him say) and when you kiss him, none of the paint or poetry or politic matters anymore, because this? This is the most beautiful thing you've ever seen. And your eyes are closed.

**や**

_... All I'm saying is there's really no reason for you guys to stay in your frozen tundra when we're getting all the work done down here._  
_Can your stuffy chalk friends beat that? Come on! Who can say no to this face? (You can't see it, but I'm pouting right now, I really am.)_  
_I'm just saying, if you were staring at your letter from Hong Kong and wondering if you should accept, just know that I have a_  
_roommate request form with my name and a blank on it._

 _Love,_  
_Newt_

 _P.S. Did you see what I did there? Love. I loooooove you._  
_Awesome. Cool. See you later._

 

 _... I won't continue to try to explain to you why I think the work up here is much more important than anything you could find in your_  
_so-called lab, but I will admit that I have been considering the request from Hong Kong for a while now. While there is a plethora of_  
_argumentative reasons why I'm almost certain us living together would only serve to bring the apocalypse closer, I would be willing to_  
_try sharing a workspace, if that's alright with you?_

 _Love,_  
_Hermann_

 _P.S. Yes, I did see what you did there. I'm not blind, Newton._  
_I love you, too._

**Author's Note:**

> a labor of four months worth of writing and almost three years worth of love, my first pacrim fic of any substance!
> 
> fun facts: there are some sections in here that if you hover over them they have commentary. i'm putting this at the end because i don't wanna distract yall the first time around, but they're just little things that were originally comments in the google doc i thought added to the story or whatnot. [here's](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com/post/141694098718/) the guide to those, [here's](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com/post/141697506818/) the music i listened to while writing, and [here's](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com/post/145438332303) the sea of romanticism.
> 
> most of this is in line with the [canon](http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline) of the movie (and i guess the book too, but that sucks so we're not gonna talk abt it) and is kinda my way of filling in the missing stuff for my dear newt & herms. i love them to death, both of them, and will probably write something more in this verse (hermann's pov? excerpts of _the_ letter? all the letters? who knows), but i put a lot of love into this cuz i wanted it to be as perfect as they deserve. hopefully i accomplished that.
> 
> anyway, thank u for reading!!!! see u later, bye
> 
> tumblr @[moonfullofstars](http://moonfullofstars.tumblr.com)


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